Beating Until We Break
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: The sequel to 'These Strings That Bind', 'And Tear Us Apart Again' and 'Heartbeat Come Undone' - a compilation of vignettes exploring C/B's past, present and future, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sharp or sweet or sour. Bittersweet and strange.
1. Lay Me Down

**_I don't know why, but I love 3x17 - probably because it inspires me. Probably because no matter how many times I watch it, I know the worst thing Chuck ever did was to be Chuck, which meant Blair would always love him. You don't have a choice in a love like theirs.  
Enjoy._**

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**Lay Me Down**

I am estranged from you.

I am estranged from you in every way imaginable.

I walk up the aisle with canapés and full glasses instead of guests; this was supposed to be our wedding someday. You never said it, but you meant it. You were too young to say it. I was too young to take that walk, but I would've walked it for you.

I know you see me, sense me, scent me standing here. I know your thoughts are ricocheting between the last time you saw me – maybe a coat, maybe a sleeve, maybe laughing with someone who wasn't you – and the last time it was okay to see me, the last time you saw me beside you. The last time we woke up happy. The last time we were friends in bed, when you laid me out and lay down beside me and just my skin was acceptable to you.

The last time I felt warm.

The last time I felt warm to you.

The last time I was more than a face in a photograph in your head, because you weren't even allowed to focus on my true face anymore. You hemmed yourself in, gave yourself rules. You reminded yourself not to send cards on my birthday.

I know.

(I hope).

I know you see me standing here. I wore a red dress tonight, but I didn't mean to catch your eye. I only meant to have a glass of champagne and an asparagus spear, to go home empty.

I slapped you across the left cheek, I remember. You burned, and I did it. You deserved it, but that was the last time I touched you. That was the last time you felt warm to me, not cold like the flute in my hand, sloshing with ice, alcohol. I grip it tightly like a security blanket, and the cold burns too. Everything itches, my clothes, my skin. Everything burns.

We have to say hello.

We _have_ to. Everyone expects us to.

Surely there are better ways.

There are better ways, you suggest, conveniently coming towards me only when the music is too loud for conversation. I am in red and you are in black and there are a dozen more brightly dressed people around us, so no one will look; so I won't look. I didn't imagine you so tall, but it makes things easier. I can lay my head on your chest, it's playing slow enough for that. I can look back down the aisle of food and drink, not up at you.

This is our first dance.

We aren't old enough for it.

Your hand is in my hair, teasing. It's wrong and I want it. I want it there longer than the duration of the melody which is just now swelling, sweet. When it dies, so do we. I go back to my champagne and my asparagus spear. You go back to the pretty girl in blue, the one who looks as if she might be jealous. You have become somebody's someone, I suppose, and I have become somebody worth being jealous of.

Will you placate her tonight, and tell her I was no one?

(An old friend).

(An ex).

(A former acquaintance).

But when we break apart, and I go to splash cold water on my face, you're standing behind me, eating up the mirror.

"Hello, Blair."

_Slap, slap, slap_: my hand on the edge of the sink.

Your hand is in my hair, teasing.

This will be the last time I felt warm to you, when the end has ended, when you write your name along my spine with your fingertip. When you've kissed me and your mouth is swollen, when your perfect collar is in disarray.

The last time we were friends in bed is still the last time.

We came against the wall for want of something better.

You followed me here for want of something better.

_Slap, slap, slap_: your hand against the woodwork when everything is over.

I am estranged from you in every way imaginable, and I go home empty and go to bed friendless, and just my skin isn't acceptable to me.

'_I never thought that the worst thing you'd do would be to me._'

I never thought the worst thing would be love without ceasing.

_Fin._


	2. Princess Of China

**_Inspired by Roman Holiday and Rihanna._**

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**Princess Of China**

Why do they keep giving dinners, galas, saint's day celebrations every day of the week? There's going to be a permanent ridge above her eyebrows from her tiara, the one that slips down a little more every other minute. Then there's the delicate balance of eating – enough of the seven or eight courses that any journalists presents won't be after the palace exclusive on the princess' 'eating disorder', but not so much that she won't fit into her dress for the next dinner.

The next gala.

The next saint's day celebration required her to go down on her knees and pray to the paparazzi.

Tonight is a supposedly informal gathering, and all that means is that commoners are invited too. They have to be luxury yacht-worthy, custom suit-worthy, black card-worthy commoners, but they're commoners all the same: untitled, unholy. She is Her Highness, and Grace Kelly is her kith and kin.

So she pushes the diamonds back above her hairline, digging the combs into her scalp. The Cartier pendants in her ears swing. Her smile is as dazzling as the gemstones.

They announce her as Her Serene Highness Blair Cornelia, Princess of Monaco.

Sophie opens the dancing with Louis, that's only tradition. Blair stays off to one side and taps her foot but doesn't dare ease out of her shoes to alleviate the pressure on the balls of her feet. She's been standing for three hours straight, welcoming, gossiping, lying, but princesses don't show discomfort. They don't cough, they don't sneeze. They keep their knees firmly pressed together to swing their legs out of a car, and their knees wide apart when an heir is required.

Princesses will grit their teeth and act their part and think about hot ginger sugar scrub treatments later.

Then he's there, at her side, all in black but for the shirtfront, the pocket square, the cravat. Not all in black, in fact. He's a businessman – English?

"Your Highness."

American.

"Mr…"

He doesn't bow. She suspects he's affronted she doesn't know him by reputation.

"I'm Chuck Bass."

There's no invitation, but they dance together anyway.

It's only tradition.

"Where are you from, Mr Bass?"

"New York."

"New York?" Her hand grips his shoulder too hard, suddenly electrified. "Tell me about New York. It's been so long…"

"It's snowing."

They're simple words, easily spoken, but she can feel him returning her grasp, firm, almost familiar on her waist. She looks into his eyes, slanting where hers are wide, cool and in control. She needs something from him, and he's a businessman. He's supplying what she demands. Maybe that means something deeper too, that he's supplying something she needs with his hold on her waist, the sudden turn that makes her head spin. It's part of the dance, of course, nothing more.

When the music stops, he kisses her hand: electrifying. A kind of handshake from a pauper (a New York-worthy, second glance-worthy pauper) to a princess.

He's Chuck Bass.

She should know him by reputation.

She'll see him again.

**.**

The world has to change before Blair wakes with a start, heart thumping.

"What is it?"

It's Chuck, warm, familiar, his arm wrapped around her as it has been all night, as it is every night, the pulse in his wrist against the pulse in her chest. He mumbles, half to the pillow, eyes half-shut – still interested, since that's what she needs of him.

"It's snowing," she murmurs, and her head drops back to the pillow.

_Fin._


	3. That Flesh Of Mine

**_I have no idea where this came from, but sometimes things occur to me that help me understand Chuck a little more. I hope this does the same for you. Named for the David Guetta and Sia song, since she'll always be a CB singer to me. Enjoy._**

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**That Flesh Of Mine**

I make a world out of bed sheets, and then I walk round and round the Sagrada Familia at three in the morning – fourteen. I did that in Barcelona, aged fourteen, disgustingly sober. I don't do my sightseeing during the day, the day is when I go to work. The night is when I go to work. It's in the time between that I sightsee, and I drink French culture and French wine. Paris doesn't need my voyeurism. Paris has had its fill. Paris is sick of Chuck Bass.

She's an angel, the girl beside me, a naked angel.

She's so wrong.

Eva has closed eyelids, and Blair looks at me through them. I imagine her sleepy gaze, shuttered by eyelashes, the sluggish contraction of her pupil. She never wants to be asleep, but when she does she basks in bed like a lizard beneath the sun. She picks up my hand and presses each fingertip to her own, matches up, joins the dots. The illusion lasts for a minute or two, and then I see her eyes with the ring in my hand, the way they chill and freeze.

Her hatred is ice, not fire, fire is the passion that used to be mine. Her revulsion is palpable. How I wanted to tell you it wasn't true. How I wanted to tell you I hadn't buried myself when I thought we were dead.

But I reverted to form, as always, and made a grave out of bed sheets.

I care for my angel, I don't want my angel. She's so pure and lovely that I have to hide myself behind the same – and then I get inside her, and the devil gets inside me, and my vision shades red as her hair shades brown inside my fist. Don't pull it, don't bite her, don't break her. I can't stop lying beside her, though. She numbs me. I tumbled from my middle ground, my perfect middle ground with her kindness and her cruelty, her short, sweet insults down into Hell, a redheaded stepchild with blonde hair, not like me, then rose up to Heaven where all my vices are locked away. I only dream when I decide to dream, like now. Or when I sleep.

But when I sleep, Blair is there. She is the nightmare.

It's the sight of her heart shrinking back inside her, the years spinning back to a witty retort, a passing glance, no more. Love made her and I unmade her love. She looks at me like a stranger inside the nightmare, inside my head.

I tell Eva it's the shooting. I kiss her to keep her quiet.

Her lips warp, plump, change.

I revert to her, as always.

To _her_.

_Fin._


	4. Obscene

**Obscene**

They expect a stone cold Basstard, naturally; curt answers, checks and balances, rock hard eyes with dollar signs for pupils and a jaw set like granite. They see the billions of dollars, the hotels, the strings of models, the scandals (both financial and romantic), the marriage, the aftermath. They think they know everything about him because the New York Times, the Financial Times, Time magazine tells them that they do. What they actually comprehend is negligible.

"Let's talk about your controversial absence."

"As you know –" As you're aware, not as you understand. "My return to the helm of Bass Industries has been a little contentious –"

"Questions have been raised about your handling of the pressures associated with such a role, your personal life, the effect of family matters on the company…"

"Things have been said, yes."

"And what sort of effect is that having on your son?"

"He's too young to be certain of anything yet." Too young to know what it is to be a Caesar, to be a Bass. "The two of them support one another at times such as these. They're not in tune with the business world, obviously, but with each other they're worryingly in sync."

The reporter is twenty five, blonde, downing sound bites like tequila shots at a bachelorette party. Her suit is cream-coloured, unlined, impractical. She's almost panting with pleasure of an exclusive, and then she's not. She looks up, looks past him. She frowns.

"I didn't realise your wife would be involved in this interview."

God, she glows like a fireball, but purer: moonlight. She's still soft in all the right places, effortlessly elegant in her dove grey shift, hair twirled up and tucked under and flaunting the sweetest spot, the nape of her neck.

"His wife gets final copy approval." She seats herself beside him, and he's immediately captivated by what's tucked in the curve of her arm. The lavender shawl stirs but doesn't make a sound in front of the press. "You get him talking about his children, and every last juicy secret will come tumbling out; that, plus a few things you didn't want to know about my last pregnancy, the twins, and how much weight this one has gained this week."

"And this one is…"

"Victoria. It's so lovely of you to come by." She's cruel in all the right places too. "Do you know, I had Audrey and Astor by the time I was your age. You're never really a woman until you're a mother, don't you agree?" Her beam, delightful, and her bared teeth, dangerous, escort Karen or Carol or Clementine all the way to the elevator. They flash and snap. "And here's a quote, since I _am_ involved in this interview: a man shouldn't be treated like he's sick or stupid if he takes time out to care for a heavily pregnant wife who's carrying high and can't stop vomiting or craving wheatgrass and bacon and adores him, and two children who feel likewise. Everyone in Manhattan can see you're wearing a thong, by the way. Have a nice day now!"

If there were a door to slam in her face, Blair would slam it. Instead, she turns tail and returns to the couch with her beauty, her bile and her precious shawl, its secret still sleeping inside.

"May I?"

"You know you don't have to ask."

He takes his daughter from her and gazes down at her raw silk face, her velvety eyelids. Milk spots are embroidered here and there on her tiny visage, and even as he thinks that she lets out a very particular wail.

"Unzip me."

The process fascinates him, for she doesn't use a towel or raise her arm. She's brazen with it, as seraphic as a Madonna (and a hundred times more alluring) as she strokes the little nose, cleverly substitutes a fingertip for a nipple for the briefest of moments before cupping her own breast and changing sides.

"Something this beautiful –" Chuck kisses Victoria's downy head, already dark brown, lusciously scented and brand new. "Deserves to be on something worthy of its beauty."

Her mother smiles, and speaks silently. "We look so good together on her."

She's put down for a nap in her own room, since the twins are with their aunt, who isn't yet familiar with sleepless nights, baby sick and the distinct cries which mean hungry, lonely, cold. The walls are striped pale yellow and lilac, and Mozart plays softly while the duck mobile whizzes round in absolute silence.

God, she's more than moonlight. She radiates life like that, watching over her child, leaning down to adjust a small sock. He only means to hold her – or maybe he doesn't – but she turns in his arms, and her lips taste new somehow.

"I want you so much."

"You had me this morning. Remember I still have five more pounds to lose."

"Fuck five pounds."

"Not in front of the baby!"

"Victoria." Arms go around his neck of their own accord, fingers lose themselves in loosening his tie and freeing him from his collar. "If your first word is 'fuck', I will buy your mother her very own private island."

"Astor's was portfolio."

"Two islands. And he is my son..."

She moans into his mouth as they kneel in tandem, then protests, "You know how fertile I am while I'm breastfeeding! I don't want four children!"

"Of course not four. Nothing so obscene as four." He's unzipping her again, nudging the strap of her bra down one shoulder with ease and with slowness.

"Thank God you agree." Her hands go for his belt now, latch on, dip below his waistband and Jesus holy _fuck_. He gasps, but can't resist the punch line.

"I was thinking more like eight."

_Fin_.


	5. Into The Woods

**Into The Woods**

It's an inn in Windham, in the small hours of the morning, when the darkness is too much. There's too much fear and closeness in the trunk of a car, too much desire to reach out and touch spiced with too much fear of what they might've done together. They fall out onto the drive, stiff legs, strained necks, bent backs. A hundred dollar bill could make the desk clerk look the other way, or it could make him suspicious.

Two hundred dollar bills are better.

She manages the first part of the way up the stairs, holding his hand. He holds her arms and her legs and carries her the rest of the way, kicks open the door, lays her down on the bed in the bridal suite. This should be bridal, he thinks bitterly; but it might not ever be bridal now.

It's the sudden brightness in her eyes, the sudden darkness when he goes to take off her shoes: _no_, as loudly as if she'd spoken it. One day he'll take her dress off and leave the ring on her finger, but today she'll take her dress off and leave the ring around her neck. The shoes go neatly beneath the nightstand, the dress is hung. She even knows how to steam it in the shower if worse comes to worst and there are cameras and cuffs.

"Are you going to sleep?"

"No."

"Try."

He stays on top of the covers again, like something might happen if he doesn't. They could both pretend it wouldn't happen, but it would. Anger, grief, sadness, elation pouring out of them and into each other, but the relief of release wouldn't last long.

As long as she keeps her eyes open, he tries.

But when she does fall, and turn away from him to a softer side of the pillow, not meaning to, not meaning anything by it, he rests his hand on the rise and fall of her ribcage and plays quiet rhythms with her bones, just in case he's never allowed to never touch her again.

There's a melody to her breathing, to her breathing and her bones.

_Fin._


	6. Crusader

**_Shamelessly inspired by The Dark Knight, which I finally watched for the first time last night. Everything would've turned out fine if they'd just let Aaron Eckhart and his bum chin explode.  
Enjoy._**

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**Crusader**

He can't tell her the things he does with his money – some of it's illegal, and some of it's not. Most of it is invested in things she'd approve of, like skyscrapers, like Chinese markets than can only go through the red roof and on upwards into capitalism. But some of it…he's financing a silent trade embargo on Monaco, arming Syrian rebels, holding the British government together for his own reasons, much to the annoyance of the populace.

And yet even with all these things they can't speak about, his mouth never gets dry.

"You look lovely tonight." Did he give her those earrings?

"Thank you." She accepts a glass of champagne, and he catches her trying not to smooth her black sheath. The velvet will never survive being smoothed. "So, another fundraiser? What for this time?"

For the sharks, he wants to tell her. He pays the bigger fish to eat the little fish and then eats them himself. His network of informants is vaster than she could imagine, although her imagination is vivid. She's currently imagining his tie a different colour, perhaps a little wider to contrast with his narrow lapels. The idea forms on her face as the sketch forms in her head.

"Work on the HIV vaccine."

"At least it's a worthy cause."

They're talking but not saying anything, or not saying much. She promised him once that if he could swallow his pride and confess his secrets, she'd be his: _say it_, _and I_'_m yours_. Years have passed, and drunken nights, and he's seen her wrapped in his bedsheets more times than he can count. He _did_ buy her those earrings, to say sorry for something. Maybe he got her hopes up that he was going to spill his guts one too many times. Maybe he forgot her birthday.

Strike that.

He never forgets her birthday.

On impulse, he leans down and kisses her cheek. The skin is as soft and tender as a flower petal, although there are softer places. He swears he felt the kick inside her chest.

"Enjoy yourself. I have to see to my guests."

Until he stops being the dark knight – the quiet partner, the voiceless vigilante – there's no chance for them to be together. She'll date eligible bachelors and bankers and politicians and maybe marry one or two, and he'll date actresses and art students and ballerinas and not marry anyone.

He chose those earrings specifically: the heaviest part of each pendant, the largest stone, was cut down from one even larger, one rock into three brilliants. The third is still waiting in a safe in his suite.

The world, his world is still waiting for him to make a choice, even as she twirls a skewer of shrimp between her fingers and doesn't eat a bite.

_Fin._


	7. Tin Man

_**Not even inspired so much as stolen from Girls. Title comes from Heartless: the Story of the Tin Man, which includes the song Yours Alone and which will break your heart as easily as it does mine.  
Enjoy.**_

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**Tin Man**

'_I just need to sleep next to someone tonight_.'  
– Marnie Michaels, It's About Time.

It's become a ritual: he'll stay up and sip scotch so long that blood vessels begin to pop in his eyes, staring at graphs projecting growth and pitches projecting into the silence. Then comes the soft knock at the door, which hesitantly opens before he can answer yes or no.

She always looks a little awkward, as if she told herself not to come (she did), that she's being stupid (she is), that she has other options (she does). She traces lines on the carpet with the toe of her pump, sandal, slingback. Her lipstick is fading at the end of the day, peach, cherry, plum. He doesn't know whether she wears her hair down every time she comes because that's the way she wore it during the day, or because she pulls the pins, clips, band out and tucks the offending article into her purse before she reaches his door.

"I know I have no right to ask."

Tonight, her dress (gown) falls in a straight white line from neck to ankle, like a streak of lightning. There are flowers around her shoulders but no further down, and her sleeves fall to the wrist and seem as if they'd like to keep on going. She is hiding inside all that light, all that delicacy.

He says nothing and stands to the side to let her in.

He doesn't need to direct her to the bedroom.

No longer hesitant, she strips, laying her dress (gown) reverently over a chair. Her lingerie is nude and as minimalistic to reduce the appearance of lines. In the doorway, he waits, watching, not commenting, until her head is on the pillow and her body beneath the sheet.

Then he lies behind her, beside her, one arm over her arm, criss-crossing or running parallel, and encloses the dainty spikes of her fingers inside his fist. He does not get under the sheet. He does nothing more than shuck his shoes and loosen his tie, and breathe where she can feel him breathing.

"I don't like sleeping alone."

"I know."

They're sleeping together, he tells her over breakfast, before she rolls her eyes and leaves with her glass of orange juice still half full.

It's only ever a matter of time.

_Fin._


	8. Hanged, Drawn, Quartered

**Hanged, Drawn, Quartered  
**

"There are other dealers."

Chuck is disgruntled; her long tanned legs are in his lap and he doesn't like the way her bare feet flex and frequently knead his crotch for no reason other than because she finds it funny. He doesn't like her tight white shirt over her ripe breasts or the well-developed vintage of her figure, aged only fifteen. Serena likes to play and Chuck likes to win, which is why he doesn't enjoy her being draped across his couch, smoking his finest and popping out smoke rings from between her Peach Parfait glossed lips.

"None who'll let me try before I buy."

"I know hookers with the same problem." He coughs, not from the weed but to cover his discomfort. "Can you move? And aren't you supposed to be at Blair's pre-party drinking and degradation of her newest recruits?"

"Blair can wait. Stop wriggling, we both know your hard-on is perfectly natural and normal. Besides, it isn't meant for me."

"No?"

"No." She leans close to his ear. Her hair tickles his cheek, a significant button on that insignificant scrap of a shirt drags across his sleeve and very nearly pops open. "_Blair_," Serena breathes, giving the name three syllables and drenching it in syrup and flickering her tongue like a snake. Pulling back and taking another drag, she giggles throatily, mirth and marijuana. "You're like a dog around her, I can't tell if you want to hump her leg or pee on her – maybe both?" He throws her legs off his lap, which just makes her laugh harder. "It's the virgin thing, isn't it? You lie awake at night all sticky because there are parts of her that no one has seen, that no one has touched…"

"Have you?"

"No."

"Have you kissed?"

"Once or twice. Blair doesn't kiss like a virgin, in case you're wondering. She's naturally greedy. It's why she…anyhow, she gets amorous on champagne, so always make sure you ask permission for her hand or any other body part after she's had a few glasses of Dom. Or I'll kick your ass."

"Let's talk about your ass instead." For want of a better pursuit, for want of getting his mind off the topic of Blair on Serena or Serena on Blair or Blair herself, the lace dresses and the pale skin and Very Cherry rather then Peach Parfait, Chuck runs his hand up the smooth slope of thigh, waiting for her to stop him. She doesn't. She looks at him from beneath long black lashes with bright blue eyes, cooler than Nate's but emptier. It sometimes seems as if she doesn't care about anything but her best friend and her next hit of the high life.

His next hit is the the hem of her skirt, and she only blinks at him.

"You wouldn't," she says calmly, no hitch in her voice, no heat in her cheeks. Serena likes to play with her woman's sinful body and her girl's spiteful mind. Light turns her on like a bulb, and so do boys who don't care either. He doesn't.

"I would."

"Have sex with me," she challenges, then pauses as if she might have more to add. Instead, Serena swings herself back into Chuck's lap, straddles him and wraps the arm holding the blunt around his neck. She isn't wearing any stockings. Her Peach Parfait lips are above his. She smells like fruit, sugar and sweet smoking garbage. "Have sex with me," she repeats. "And Blair will never want you."

"I don't want her."

"Prove it." She licks at the corner of his mouth like a dog, like a cat, like a Chucktease.

And he thinks about it.

_Serena –_

And he tastes weed in the air.

_– effing –_

And he tastes her taste, how she would taste, like a name drenched in syrup, like an hour's worth of sunshine.

_– van der Woodsen_.

Chuck grits his teeth

"There are other dealers."

And Serena smiles her bad girl smile that matches her bad girl hemline but not the old movies she watches on a Saturday morning. She lets strangers pour tequila down her throat and take her back to their 'studio apartments' and dreams of a grand romance with someone more than them, but it isn't him.

She climbs off him to help herself to the stack of blue pills on top of a CD case, to twirl around the room and reach out her arms to the future.

He puts a pill on his tongue, and he tastes _her_ taste, how _she_ would taste.

Very Cherry gloss and blood when she bit his tongue off for treason.

_Fin._


	9. High

_**I rewatched The Wrong Goodbye tonight. I've been in a situation where there's a time limit on your happiness with someone, so I empathised...then I wrote.  
Enjoy.**_

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**High**

I have been high before. I have been bright lights and opera music high once or twice, and nobody knows or guesses. Why would they? I'm their queen, their daughter, their bride-to-be, and Blair Waldorf does not get high.

But I have been bright lights and opera music high once or twice, and now the lights are burning my eyes, filling them with tears. I have to keep blinking and clapping while the bass shakes the floor. She sings about fire and the beat that pounds, that's pounding inside me. This is what it feels like to be high, to be blinded, to be deafened, to be shaken and to shake. I can twirl and laugh because it doesn't matter. Death took a holiday and I have taken a holiday from my life for one night only, from being myself, from being a queen, a daughter, a bride-to-be.

And then I get higher. Up in the air, terrified I might fall down and terrified I might not. It's like an orgasm, the pressure to stay high and then stay higher and then stay highest building and building until it breaks, and then the fall is ecstasy.

It's more.

It's amphetamines.

Barbiturates.

Crack cocaine.

It's like an orgasm because the touch is familiar. The kiss is familiar. I don't need to turn my head to know who is holding my hand, who is kissing my knuckles, but I still do. I have seen that face over me, under me, beside me, and I have broken every time. The eyes know my body, the mouth knows my mouth, and the face belongs to a friend.

A friend, and more.

Lover.

Enemy.

Reflection.

Coming with him is like coming down to earth, I can't let go. I used to hook my fingers into his shirt, wrap my legs around his legs, let my hair lie between us and bind us together. The fall is ecstasy and you don't die, and it takes a few minutes for you to breathe easily again, for your heart to stop racing. We always fell together. We always survived together.

I can't let go of this high just yet, of this rush, of Chuck Bass' hand in my hand. I want our colours to bleed together, red and redder, reddest. To be high is to forget reality in favour of fantasy, to forget Heaven and Hell. We use the best parts of each when we're together. We climb to altitudes where we have to gasp for air, and we burn until the sweat breaks out on our backs, two backs, same beast, and everything is salt, and everything is sweet. Coming with him takes me through fantasy and out again and all the way back to reality, and it is always anarchy, and it is always alchemy.

I have been high before.

I have never been so high, and I have never fallen so far.

_Fin_.


End file.
